gration law firm that processes vast amounts of paperwork; computer vision can help analyze that data and automate some decision-making processes. Another legal client is using AI to create a better experience for veterans when they apply for disability claims. Other clients include: a maker of software for HVAC technicians; a company that deploys low-orbit weather balloons to detect potential wildfires; and a client that needed a tool to help monitor growth in coral-restoration farms. “They’re not a technology company, but they have all sorts of ideas on how to automate parts of their business using AI, which is a perfect fit for us,” Sklarew says. “They have a lot of data, and we can make a real impact on their business by creating products for them and ultimately for their customers.” Many of Synaptiq’s applications are in health care. Among their spin-offs in 2019 was Medicine in Motion, a company using AI technology from smart watch data to offer real-time movement prescriptions. They’ve also worked with Spine by Design, a spin-off company that came out of research done by Morgan Giers at Oregon State University. Synaptiq helped create software that uses computer vision and machine learning to analyze patient data to predict the likelihood of reherniation after spinal surgery. Giers partnered with Charla Triplett, a health care investor who manages Launch Oregon, a University of Oregon innovation lab that helps turn promising academic research into commercially viable ventures. Spine by Design needed support to build something that looks more like commercial software. Spine by Design hired Sklarew’s team to help the company from the academic version of its software to the next stage, where staff could test it with their clinical hospital partners to “make sure that our model works the same as what we thought it would,” Triplett says. Working with Synaptiq helped the company get to that validation checkpoint — which is helpful in its fundraising process, Triplett says. Hospitals and insurance companies want products that help predict outcomes, Triplett says. Eventually, they’ll likely sell Spine by Design to a health care software company that can integrate it into existing patientcare systems used by doctors. For Synaptiq, Spine by Design is an example of how AI is about giving humans superpowers, not taking away their jobs. That’s why Synaptiq’s tagline is “The Humankind of AI,” Sklarew says. Those sorts of ethical discussions come up all the time in the graduate school class Sklarew teaches to MBA students at Portland State University. AI is merely a mechanism to use data to make decisions, but if humans aren’t reviewing data for bias, Sklarew says, AI is just exacerbating a problem that already exists. “It’s the hard work,” he says. “It’s getting into the trenches and looking at everything you have on a regular basis and making sure that what you have is representative of the people that are going to be using that data. And if you don’t have good representation of that data, making the effort to collect data that is more representative. That’s hard work, honestly.” Oh, remember that first “cool” website Sklarew made back in the 1990s as a grad student? He’s come full circle. One of Synaptiq’s side projects is using computer vision (via smartphones) to identify different types of aquatic insects so biologists can better understand stream health. “That’s something that I used to do behind a microscope for hours at a time as a grad student,” he says. “So connecting the dots there has been great.” AI AN IN-DEPTH REPORT “What we realized a couple of years in was the hard part isn’t training the models; the hard part is the data. And so it’s not the fun and exciting stuff to talk about, but really helping clients focus on their data such that they can use AI was actually a much larger opportunity.” — Stephen Sklarew JASON E. KAPLAN Synaptiq’s Stephen Sklarew 39
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